Cognitive style, gender and learning from multi-media materials in 11-year-old children

Eighty 11-year-old pupils (40 males and 40 females) from an urban primary s chool were assessed for cognitive style by means of the Cognitive Styles An alysis which indicated their positions on each of the two style dimensions, the Wholist-Analytic and the Verbal-Imagery. They then studied parts of th ree CD-ROM multi-media packages on science topics and after each, completed a multiple choice recall test, An indication of their performance on tradi tionally taught science was taken to be the performance on science SATs at 11 years. A comparison between multi-media and traditional work indicated t hat, (a) in terms of overall science performance (traditional and multi-med ia), Wholist-Imagers and Analytic-Verbalisers were superior to Wholist-Verb alisers and Analytic-Imagers, and (b) Analytics did better on traditional w ork than multimedia, with the reverse for the Wholists. With the multi-medi a materials there were three modes of presentation-picture and sound (PS), picture and text (PT), and picture, text and sound (PTS), Female Wholist-Im agers and Analytic-Verbalisers were better with PS than PT, with the revers e for Wholist-Verbalisers and Analytic-Imagers, while the opposite applied for males. For all style and gender groups performance was best with PTS. T he findings are discussed in terms of their practical implications and furt her research.